It all beings April 19 with the launch of Feisty, and then continues on in October when Gutsy Gibbon — the next version — launches (I know, I know, I’m still getting amped up over Feisty too. But hey, this is software right? What’s new is old the moment it goes live).

Click the image above for an expanded, full size view of the Linux distribution timeline. On a related note, the image brings up an interesting point about fragmentation, doesn’t it? I’ll be digging into that topic a little bit deeper than with just an image later on, so stay tuned.

DesktopLinux.com has the scoop on CentOS 5, which was released this week. It features the GNOME desktop and a 2.6.18 kernel. CentOS is basically Red Hat Enterprise 5 without the branding or certification and support. The distro is based on the upstream release of RHEL 5 and includes packages from all variants, including Server and Client. All upstream repositories have been combined into one.

Major changes in CentOS 5 compared to CentOS 4 include:

numerous updated software versions

better desktop support with Compiz and AIGLX

virtualization provided by the Xen hypervisor with Virtual Machine Manager and libvirt

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com always has a presence at LinuxWorld, even back in the days when there were two of them a year. We’ll be back in full force again this summer, when LinuxWorld returns to the Moscone Center in San Francisco August 6-9. I mention that today because the official release just went out over the wire announcing that registration was now open for LinuxWorld San Francisco, and we hoe to see you all there.

Just like we hope to see you at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego on May 9-11. Users are what make the IT industry tick, not press releases or even analyst commentary, and I have to say that both of these shows have been both enjoyable and educational in the end user department.

Mark Shuttleworth personally took some time out of his busy schedule today to introduce the name and release date of the next Ubuntu upgrade: Gutsy Gibbon.

In addition to announcing Gibbon, Shuttleworth also announced a new “ultra-free” version of Ubuntu that can be expected alongside it.

The new “flavour” of Ubuntu will take “an ultra-orthodox view of licensing: no firmware, drivers, imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not include full source materials and come with full rights of modification, remixing and redistribution … for those who demand a super-strict interpretation of the ‘free’ in free software,” said Shuttleworth.

He said the new distro would be done in conjunction with the team behind Gnewsense, the Free Software Foundation-backed Gnu/Linux distribution.

Also in the mailing, Shuttleworth again pushes Ubuntu’s role as a server OS:

While Ubuntu is by no means the 800-pound gorilla in the server game, the Gibbon will show that lean and mean count for something! Agility of deployment, together with integrated management will be a focus for the Ubuntu server team. Gutsy will not be an LTS (Long Term Support) release, but it will nonetheless see a lot of server work and be useful for fast-moving server deployments.

You have to love our timing here at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com. Just yesterday we posted a feature on Ubuntu as a rising star in the server room. I think the potential is there, it remains to be seen if Canonical’s slow boil strategy can get some traction this year or next.

This is software, after all, so bugs fixes and “room for improvement” are not surprises, but the part that did catch my eye was the part we have been writing incessantly about at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com since late last year: Xen.

Compared with VMware’s VI3 (VMware Infrastructure 3) and with the Xen-based Virtual Iron and XenEnterprise products we’ve reviewed, RHEL 5’s tools for creating and managing guest machines are pretty Spartan, and our experiences installing and running Windows Server 2003 and RHEL 5 guests contained more troubleshooting and Googling than we would have liked.

However, we expect that any company looking for a general-purpose Linux operating system with solid support and lots of hardware and software certifications would be rather pleased with RHEL 5.

Make no mistake about it, reviews of RHEL5 have been positive, and this Xen hiccup was an expected one, given the newness of the technology and the fact that Red Hat isn’t firing on all cylinders with it just yet. The question is how quickly RH can turn things around, especially with Novell having such a big head start.

Our sister site SearchServerVirtualization.com will surely be monitoring Xen’s overall progress, so make sure you check out what they’re doing over there. Keep your browser pointed here for everything else happening with Red Hat — including SearchEnterpriseLinux.com’s field trip to their Summit in San Diego next month.

I’ve been conversing via the blogosphere with an IT administrator based in the U.K. about Nagios and CentOS today, and I must say it’s been an experience.

As you may know already, we posted a short case study about some SNMP-related trouble one IT manager was having with Nagios, and why he eventually went with a third party out-of-box application from Hyperic for monitoring and systems management.

Across the pond, Kieron Williams (that IT manager I mentioned above) is in charge of a small pub company called Brunning and Price. If the beer stops flowing, he has a problem, he said, but it’s not so much the case if, say, an email is 30 minutes late. Nagios works just fine for him in that regard, but it appears this popular open source monitoring project is only helpful to a point in enterprise environments, no?

The reason this conversation has been so helpful to me is because Kieron is also dabbling with CentOS due to some Microsoft Windows-related licensing headaches (quick aside: I think I’ve written the phrase “Microsoft licensing headaches” a gazillion times over the past three years at SearchEnterpriseLinux).

It just so happens that I’m putting together a CentOS piece for SEL due out this week or next. So, if you have anything to offer up on why you’d choose CentOS in your enterprise environment — or any CentOS stories for that matter — drop me a line at Jack Loftus, News Writer or fire off a comment below.

If you do a lot of lookups using a particular column of a table, or if you join on a column, that column should be indexed. Moreover, if all of the data that you are retrieving is available in the index (e.g. you’re using a multi-column index) then MySQL can avoid looking at the table altogether and execute your query using just the index.
Avoid superfluous queries

Don’t do this:

$result = query_db(‘select * from table1’);

for each $result as $row
$array[] = query_db(‘select * from table2 where column = ‘.$row[‘id’]);
endforeach;

This is the most important tip. SQL optimization really has to be done on a case by case basis, and you can’t do it unless you have a good understanding of the language and how you can use it to your advantage. You need to understand things like subqueries, grouping, left joins vs. right joins vs. full joins, etc. There is no free lunch.

Lunch… hmm. What time is it? MySQL queries make me hungry — but only if they’re well written!

It seems like only yesterday that Microsoft’s Bill Hilf was calling for calm on Port 25, a Web site the guys in Redmond set up to give readers a look inside the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab. Why was Hilf calling for calm? Why, it was because open source advocates had stormed the message boards with skeptical posts regarding Microsoft’s intentions. Anonymous commenting privileges were promptly turned off.

When we started Port25 a year ago we certainly had no idea how it would turn out. The process of creating, launching, and evolving Port25, I believe, has many similarities to an OSS project: small group of motivated individuals, loosely coupled development model, organic growth, and meritocratic guidance and leadership. These things helped us quite a bit as we broke some new ground for Microsoft and I’m proud of where we are at one year in.

The site was established to promote openness at Microsoft and serve as a point of contact for users and MS developers. Maybe it’s working, but the MS-Novell patent deal and other patent related issues tell me there’s more work to be done before we see Linus Torvalds raising a glass with Steve Ballmer. Did I just make anyone shudder?